单词 | 十分普遍 |
释义 | 〔powerful〕In the upper southern United States the wordspowerful and mighty are intensives used frequently like the adverb very : Your boy's grown powerful big.The new baby is mighty purty.Powerfulis used as an adjective in some expressions: The storm did a powerful lot of harm. In the same dialect regionthe nounpower has, in addition to its standard meaning, the sense of "a large number or amount.”This sense appears in theOxford English Dictionary as common in dialectal British English of the 18th and 19th centuries: "It has done a power of work" (Charles Dickens).All these derivative senses ofpower and might take advantage of the notion of strength inherent in these nouns, making them natural intensives. Colloquial English is always on the lookout for ways to make language more vivid with new intensives.We think of the upper southern part of the United States as linguistically conservative,but in fact it has preserved uses ofpower, powerful, and mighty that were innovative in their time. 在美国中南部powerful 及 mighty 这两个词用作强调词并与 very 一样用得很频繁: 你的儿子已长得很大了。新生儿非常干净。Powerful在有些表达中还用作形容词: 这暴风造成巨大灾害。 在同一方言区中,名词power 除了具有标准含义外, 还有“大的数字或数量”之意。该意义出现在牛津英语词典 中, 在18世纪及19世纪的英国英语方言中使用也十分普遍: “它已做了大量工作” (查尔斯·狄更斯)。所有power 及 might 的这些衍生意义都利用两个名词本身力量的含义而使它们成为强调词。 英语口语一直在寻求途径以运用新的强调词,使语言变得更为生动。我们认为美国中南部在语言的使用上是很保守的,但事实上,这部分地区却保留了在当时十分创新的power,powerful 及 mighty 的用法 |
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